Learn my way
by EleniDalby
Summary: A Effie and Haymitch fic that I'm playing with. Life after the games, after the politics must have been tough. I'm curious to see how Effie and Haymitch settle into each other


It doesn't happen all at once, not like he expects. It happens slowly, like one of those captures on a capitol documentary of a flower opening in slow motion. One petal at a time and before you know it, the whole damn bloom is right there in front of you, vulnerable, perfect and almost unbelievably beautiful. Burst. Like something from a dream.

One end rolls into another beginning and suddenly there's a new government swirling up from the ashes, panicked and proud people rising to take the places of the calm, cruel and controlling. They want him to join in, want him as part of the government as if the face, the mask that he managed to pull on in those last few months (years? Feels like centuries) was real. They think the capable, cunning man who managed to put aside the bottle long enough to find these poor kids some hope, to play a game against people who were the ultimate game-makers, was real. Hilarious. Side grippingly, bottle-clenching funny.

Maybe Katniss was right, maybe they needed to burn the whole lot of them and leave them in their own mess.

_Aah Katniss, you brilliant little nightmare_. He didn't know what it was that drove that kid, that _woman_ now, but he admired what it was, that little flare deep inside her that was more intelligent than she was, more cold and more calculated too. Especially since Prim- Haymitch would have liked to have met her father. Add it to the list of regrets that were long and dark enough that he kept them well hidden away, tucked _way_ down in the bottom of the fifth or eighth bottle.

He bumped into walls, drunk on only half a bottle - out of practice thanks to those pair, thanks to may-she-rot-in-hell Coin. Haymitch found the stares of those he passed unusually aggravating like pins on his skin, like the words whitewashed onto the inside of his skull nearly half a century ago. He used to be able to ignore them - words and snide looks alike. He thought he'd been wearing his mask too long. Pretending to be an adult when-

"Really, now?" The voice was almost painfully high and sharp, like starlight cutting through the fog both distant and cold. Haymitch looked up and very nearly managed not to laugh. Effie Trinket, whatever it was that remained of her, barred his way. Even now, miles and political decades away from the Capitol she was still a beacon of cloying and dangerous civilization. She stood, her little form swathed in some brutally altered variant of the military green uniform that was being handed around nowadays, with one hand fisted on her slender hips, the other hanging loose - unpainted and without the screwed up paper bunch of glittering rings she usually wore her hands were actually quite delicate. Poised. Like the rest of her. Haymitch felt a well of hatred bloom up through the fog.

"Well if it isn't the little Princess." He managed, words very, _very_ carefully not slurring together as he aimed a smirk at her. "To what do I owe the pleasure, your highness?" He attempted a bow, staggered forward a few steps and pretended not to notice when she reached out, one hand steadying him by the shoulder before she let go as if he was something sticky, something...repulsive.

"You're drunk, Haymitch." She snapped. "_Again_. After _everything_ we've been through-" He held up a hand, the hand that held the bottle, cutting off her overly emotional tirade before it even began.

"I'm drunk? Really?" He stared at the bottle as if seeing it for the first time. "Is that what this is? Maybe I should try it again just to be sure?" He took a hefty swig, feeling the corners of his mouth pull down at the rough burn of the white liquor. Greasy Sae's finest this was most certainly not. "Huh, seems you're right, I _am_ drunk." So yes, maybe he was ladling the sarcasm and spite on a little thickly but who the hell was left to care? He raised the bottle to his lips again and ended up coughing and spluttering as Effie knocked the bottle from his mouth but not quite his grip. They stared at each other in mutual shock, Effie surprised at her own actions and Haymitch not far behind. If it had been anyone else - Katniss, the boy even - Haymitch would have knocked them for six but this was _Effie Trinket_. He would never have dreamed that she would do something so...rude. Unfortunately for him, Effie was the first to recover her composure, placing a hand flat against the slightly concave plane of her belly as if to remind herself of her structure...or possibly to keep something in.

"Well stop it." She said it with the same sharp efficiency that she said everything with nowadays. The affected Capitol drawl a thing of the past making her words sharp and short. "The world is turned upside down, our tributes are barely stringing along and you are busy feeling sorry for yourself." He could almost, very nearly hear the 'I'm sorry' lurking at the end of the sentence and he hated her all the more for it. Hated her for looking so much like the Capitol that they'd spent so much time bringing down. Hated her for being captured and having to be rescued and being rescued _last_, reminding him of how useless he really was. Hated her for not really meaning any of it. She was flailing around looking for something solid just as much as he was. He thought he had found it in the bottom of a bottle. He refused to become her next project.

"Our tributes? Wake up, princess, they're all grown up. Katniss nearly died for executing a tyrant that needed to be put down." He tried snapping his fingers in front of her face but they felt too thick, inflexible, not like his own. "Peeta's beyond a mess. They're broken adults now. Not kids that need protecting." Haymitch gestured between the two of them, inadvertently slopping what remained of the alcohol down the front of Effie's outfit. "We failed." He narrowed his eyes as her bottom lip started to tremble and wanted to tear her apart for it. "We failed at protecting them. All this-" He spread his arms wide, indicating the dank grey corridor with it's dim, rationed lighting, the whole of thirteen and the chaotic remains of the world in general. "-it's our fault." He should have seen it coming, should have known what pushing this new, sharper Effie Trinket would do but he really had drunk too much. She snatched the bottle from his hands with a speed and rage that he wouldn't have guessed at and threw it against the wall, tiny bits of green shattering into a million pieces and spreading damage and alcohol across the other side of the room. There were gasps, a sudden silence from those in thirteen who were used to strict rations and, even in the heat of her anger, Effie still glanced about, shame breaking through the anger for a moment. She stamped up to Haymitch, who didn't react. She wasn't a real threat to him after all these years, something he didn't need to flinch from. Not like Katniss and Peeta who's intentions he was never really sure of. Well, maybe not Peeta.

"They are still alive, Haymitch." Effie hissed right in his face, brilliant ice blue eyes wide. "They are _alive_ and we kept them that way_."_ Haymitch felt her hands fist in the front of his jacket, shaking him as much as her frail form would allow.

"At what cost though?" He wasn't sure what made him do it, though years later he would blame it on the drink, but he laid his calloused hands over hers - the only soft thing he had touched for what felt like years. He watched the rage in her eyes dissipate, giving way to something much worse, and he would swear that he saw her eyes change colour from cobalt to sky blue before they began to swim with tears.

And that's how Haymitch Abernathy, drunk on half a bottle, ended up in corridor 8G with Effie Trinket sobbing on him like a broken doll. It's where things began to change, it's where an end became another beginning.


End file.
